PODCAST · society
The Sewers of Paris
by Matt Baume
Revealing stories about the books, movies, tv, music and more that have changed the lives of gay men. Each week, a guest plucks a piece of entertainment from their past, and answers the question: how did it change your life?
Episodes
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Watching Two Porcupines Mate (The Thomas Crown Affair/Mike)
My guest this week has a track record of going viral — whether he wanted to or not. Mike Aylesworth’s first brush with fame was as a teenager in the late 90s when he challenged the Boy Scouts’ ban on gay members… then in adulthood when he dreamed up an invention in the bathtub that changed his...
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I Came Out with the Latinos (Ep 380 - The Birdcage/Tony Rodriguez)
You might recognize the voice of this week’s Sewers of Paris guest — Tony Rodriguez plays Julio on The Simpsons, a role originated by Hank Azaria. This part didn’t come to Tony in the way you might expect. It was a combination of talent, training, taking some very bold initiative, and an...
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Horny is a Response (Ep 579 - Batman & Robin/Jack)
My guest this week is writer and historian Jack Shoulder. You might know him from his daily social media posts focusing on butts from across art history, or for his upcoming book Museum Hotties… which is about exactly what it sounds like. As a kid, Jack’s interest in classical sculpture was...
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Nasty Pig is Poetry (Ep 578 - Pink Floyd/David Lauterstein)
My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris is David Lauterstein, the founder and CEO of Nasty Pig. You probably know his company for their sexy fetish-infused street wear, so you might not expect that David’s background is in writing poetry. But the closer you look at his approach to designing...
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Southern Decadence (Ep 577 - James Baldwin/Jonathan)
This week marks the birthday of the author and activist James Baldwin, and to mark the occasion we’re heading into the Sewers archives for a conversation that touches on the expansiveness of Baldwin’s writing. In 2022, I spoke with a guest named Jonathan about how literature helped him discover a...
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The Harlot's Progress (Ep 576 - Iain/composing opera)
My guest on The Sewers of Paris this week is Iain Bell, who made a career out of his personal passion for music. But he took a winding road to get there ... and could never have predicted that a job as a personal trainer would be a crucial step towards premiering an opera in Vienna.
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I Owe My Life to Mariah (Ep 575 - Mariah Carey/Bisi)
My guest this week grew up in challenging circumstances — a gay kid in Nigeria with a religious family, Bisi couldn’t imagine anywhere on Earth he might belong. Especially after he came out on national television, and had to apply for asylum to escape his increasingly dire living situation. It…
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A Great Excuse for Touching (Ep 574 - Interrupting TV shows/Murray Edelman)
A few months ago, I came across an incredible video. It’s the early 70s, and a local Chicago talk show is interviewing a doctor who wrote a sex education book that millions of people across the country were reading … unaware that it was full of wildly incorrect and frankly homophobic claims about...
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We've Decided Trauma is Funny (Ep 573 - Improv/Mano)
My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris is writer/comedian Mano Agapion, whose work you may know from his appearances on Hacks and Bajillion Dollar Properties, his writing on the new Punky Brewster, or from his podcasts We Love Trash and Drag Her. Mano developed his sense of humor alongside the...
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Sewers of Paris: Magic Horses & Middle School (Ep. 572 - Fantasy novels/Hugh Ryan)
When you compare what queer life was like at the end of the 80s to the start of the 2000s, the differences are so shocking it’s hard to believe that those years are only separated by a single decade. The author and historian Hugh Ryan has a new book about the people who shaped that decade…
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My Second Life (Ep 571 - Phantom of the Opera/Chris Geidner)
You might’ve seen that I have a new video up on YouTube this week — it’s about the long hard fight for marriage equality, and how some Hollywood icons got involved in the cause. The battle for the freedom to marry has been very much on my mind lately, so I wanted to revisit an interview from 2022...
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Don't Make Superman TOO Sexy (Ep 570 - Superhero comics/Joe)
Next week sees the release of a new Supergirl movie, so for this week’s Sewers of Paris we’re diving into the archives to revisit my 2020 interview with artist Joe Philips. Joe’s illustrations of handsome, happy gay men were some of the first glimpses I got of gay life, back in the 90s when I was…
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Permission to Make Queer Art (Ep 569 - Gregg Araki films/Daniel & Andrew)
For this week’s episode, we have two guests: Andrew Klaus-Vineyard and Daniel Talbott are the directors of a new documentary short called Welcome to Tool Shed, which opens to the door to an iconic leather bar in Palm Springs. They’re just back from showing the film at Cannes, and it’ll be popping...
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We Went Through the Ringer (Ep 568 - murder mysteries/Caleb)
My guest this week is Caleb Roehrig, author of young adult mysteries and the occasional romance. Caleb had always wanted to be an author, but life intervened and he found himself living in LA, working as a producer on reality TV shows. He didn’t realize it at the time, but that work was a…
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The Luckiest Little Homosexual in the World (Ep 567 - The Tonys/Jeffrey)
The world just celebrated Shakespeare’s birthday — born in late April, a scant four hundred and sixty two years ago, which makes him almost as old as this podcast. Over the years we’ve had many guests on The Sewers of Paris for whom Shakespeare’s work was an inspiration, and this week we’ll hear…
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To Be a Goblin (Ep 566 - Labyrinth/Jes)
My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris is Jes Battis, who’s just written an appreciation and analysis of the movie Labyrinth entitled It’s Only Forever. Labyrinth turns 40 this year, which marks 40 years of Jes’ particular fascination with the goblin characters — and wondering why he’s always...
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I Saw Myself in Kermit (Ep 565 - The Muppet Show/Dan)
To mark the recent re-re-re-rebooting of The Muppet Show, this week we’re heading into the Sewers archives to revisit my 2020 interview with Dan Steadman. Dan grew up in a household that was so religious, his parents forbade him from watching certain episodes of The Muppet Show, due to a guest...
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Theater is My Version of Church (Ep 564 - Catwoman/Greg)
A few weeks ago I came across an online video from a comic convention featuring a phalanx of comic book figures — life-size statues, painted to look like they’d walked off the pages of a comic book. Their creator is Greg Maraio, an actor and artist in Boston who fills his time between shows with...
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The Most Expensive Flop in Broadway History (Ep 563 - Madeline Kahn/William)
The day this episode comes out, March 26 2026, is the 115th birthday of renowned playwright Tennessee Williams. And to mark the occasion, we’re heading into the Sewers archives to hear my 2020 interview with writer William V. Madison, whose career was inspired in part by a moving experience in...
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The Fire that Came with Creating (ep 562 - Fifth Element/Ricardo)
My guest this week is illustrator Ricardo Bessa, whose beautiful art features lush colorful fantasy settings and characters on fabulous adventures, often very queer. Ricardo knew he was a fish out of water in the town where he grew up, and planned to move to London to find others like him … and...
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Making Something Special Out of Garbage (Ep 561 - Pro wrestling/David)
On last week’s episode we heard from drag comedienne Pissi Myles, and this week we’ll hear from Pissi’s husband, photographer and creative director David Ayllon. David’s specialty is weird colorful visions that lean heavily on the spooky, the queer, and the poppiest of pop art — a career that he...
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Nothing About my Life Isn't Funny (Ep 560 - The Birdcage/Pissi Myles)
My guest this week is drag comedienne Pissi Myles, who always knew she needed to be on stage but wasn’t always sure where she fit in… thanks to a music theater education that left her feeling like she couldn’t measure up to her classmates, and comparing herself to the host of Blues Clues. That…
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The Cool Person I Could Be (Ep 559 - Pokemon/Cody Shipman)
This week marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Pokémon, and to celebrate we’re diving into the Sewers archives to hear my 2019 chat with Cody Shipman. Cody’s a graphic designer and artist here in Seattle whose work is very beautiful, very gay, and very explicit. For a long time, he felt...
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A Love of Showbiz (Ep 558 - Television City/Randy)
This week, I’m welcoming back Randy West, who was my guest in the Sewers of Paris way back in 2017. Randy is a TV industry veteran whose voice you might recognize from announcing on shows like The Price is Right, Supermarket Sweep, Big Brother, and countless others. From his decades behind a...
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Imposter Syndrome (Ep 557 - Aladdin/Tim)
My guest this week is Steven Salvatore, author of young adult romances like And They Lived…, No Perfect Places, and When Love Gives You Lemons. Steven’s plan, when he was younger, was to be an artist… until a cruel art teacher crushed his dreams. But that set the stage for him to discover a…
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Power Will Corrupt (Ep 556 - Fallout/Tim Cain)
My guest this week is game developer Tim Cain, who’s shown us what the end of the world looks like. Back in the mid-90s, Tim was working with a small team on a post-apocalyptic game with a 1950s aesthetic — a weird mix of styles that Tim was worried would bomb so hard he expected his next job…
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A Little Scared and a Little Intrigued (Ep 555 - High school chorus/Julian Cyr)
My guest this week is Massachusetts State Senator Julian Cyr, whose district includes Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket — a situation he never expected to find himself in. As a teenager, Julian was mainly focused on singing, and planned to pursue a career in the humanities. But when…
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Transporting You to an Amazing Place (Ep 554 - Drag superheros/Cheyne)
My guest this week is queer artist and illustrator Cheyne Gallarde, whose style blends drag icons with classic comic book covers. Cheyne first discovered drag in queer bars of Hawaii, and after a memorable night getting pulled up onstage, he started translating the magic that he saw in the...
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We've Cornered the Market on Mermaids (Ep 553 - Joel Kim Booster/murder mysteries)
Congratulations to actor-writer-comedian Joel Kim Booster, who got married last month to his partner John. You might know Joel as the writer and star of the movie Fire Island, or as a voice actor in KPop Demon Hunters, or from shows like Big Mouth, Search Party, and Loot. But before all that…
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Blood, Sex, Gore, and Magic (Ep 552 - Buffy/Michael)
You may know this week’s guest from his online persona, The Black Gay Comic Geek — an identity that grew out of his Buffy fandom, which was so intense that for a time he was an administrator of a Buffy role-playing community where he was a magic shop owner and queen of the vengeance demons. These...
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Thank You for Reading us for Filth (Ep 551 - Nancy Drew/Jumata)
My guest this week is author Jumata Emill, whose new novel is entitled I Don’t Wish You Well. It’s about a true-crime writer who uncovers a queer coverup in his hometown — based in part on Jumata’s prior work as a real-life crime reporter, before he made the jump to fiction. We’ll have that...
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Christmas at its Wackiest (Ep 550 - BenDeLaCreme)
I can think of few better ways to spend the holidays than seeing some live queer theater, whether it’s Golden Girls Live, a sing-along to Mame, or shows with some of my local Seattle drag legends like Dina Martina and Scott Shoemaker. And one of the most iconic holiday duos to emerge from the...
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I Told a Priest I Was Having Impure Thoughts (Ep 549 - Montgomery Clift/Steven)
My guest this week is Steven Milliken, author of a book of autobiographical essays entitled Late Bloomer Baby Boomer. Steven was a class clown who grew up to become a teacher in some fairly rough schools, and had to move in and out of the closet over the years as he navigated sensitive careers...
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The Weirdest Possible Fellowship (Ep 548 Flipper/Tom)
My guest this week had his big screen debut alongside Adam Baldwin and Matt Dillon in 1980; made a career getting gays online with PlanetOut in the 90s; and today work for TED Talks, bringing together who are doing, as he describes it, some of the weirdest work in he world. Tom Rielly’s had a lot...
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The Wonderful Queerness of Oz (Ep 547 - Terry Blas, Josh Trujillo, Emma McMahan, and Dee Michel)
For this week’s Sewers of Paris, I’m chatting with four Oz superfans about their intense connections to films like The Wizard of Oz, books like Return to Oz, and adaptations like Wicked. These conversations are all part of my new video about Oz and queer culture that just went live on YouTube —...
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Fairies and Mortals Can't Get Married (Ep 546 The Wizard of Oz/Dee)
To mark the recent release of the second Wicked film, for this week’s episode we’re revisiting my 2020 interview with Dee Michel, author of the book Friends of Dorothy: Why Gay Boys and Gay Men Love the Wizard of Oz. Dee’s book is an in-depth examination of queer Oz fandom, which for him has its...
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Give Yourself a Little Pleasure (Ep 545 - Christmas film noir/Alonso Duralde)
I am delighted to welcome back a friend of the Sewers, film critic and holiday aficionado, Linoleum Knife’s Alonso Duralde. His book, Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas, is now out in a revised and updated edition, gathering even more expert recommendations for holiday films to enjoy this...
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It Makes Every Gay Bone in my Body Vibrate (Ep 544 - Broadway/Stephen Oremus)
The second of the Wicked films comes out later this month, and so for this week’s episode we’re jumping into the Sewers archives to hear my 2017 chat with Tony winner Stephen Oremus, who was the music director for Wicked on Broadway and conducted the orchestras for the two Wicked films. He was…
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Janky and Dark: (Ep 543 - Maurice Sendak/Trung)
My guest this week is Trung Le Nguyen, author of the new graphic novel Angelica and the Bear Prince. Trung’s books emerge from his lifelong love of fairy tales, some of them quite dark, and also his fascination with people figuring out how to take care of each other. We’ll have that conversation…
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I Was Born This Way (Ep 542 - Bewitched/Wellington)
My guest this week has been giving a lot of thought lately to what he was born to do. Wellington Love is one of the producers of the new documentary I Was Born This Way, which tells the story of Archbishop Carl Bean. That might not be a household name, but you’re certainly familiar with his work...
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It Scared the Sh*t out of Me (Ep 541 - Halloween/Jim)
My guest this week is Jim Farmer, festival director of Atlanta’s Out on Film fest. Jim’s a longtime arts reporter in Atlanta, though he got his start in journalism doing just-the-facts newsgathering — a beat that bored him to tears, until he decided to take the reins and create his own career…
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Swept Away by Dracula (Ep 540 - Frankenhooker/Jeffrey)
Now that we’re in October already, it’s a fine time to reflect on the uncanny grasp that horror has in the hearts of so many queer people. So for this week’s episode, we’re heading into the Sewers archives for a chat with director Jeffrey Schwarz, for whom horror is just one small slice of the...
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It Was Really Dark and Kind of Scary (Ep 539 - The Neverending Story/Mark Waddell)
My guest this week is writer Mark Waddell. His novel, Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World, comes out next week on October 7 — a queer story about an office worker whose career advancement involves world-ending consequences. There’s an autobiographical edge to the story, since in his real life...
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Demons & Ghosts (Ep 538 - The Addams Family/Hamish Steele)
As you may have seen, I have a new video premiering this weekend about the 1985 film Kiss of the Spider Woman, which features an iconic performance from a then-obscure actor named Raul Julia. Thanks to my research into Raul’s career, I’ve had another of his iconic roles on my mind lately — that…
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I Bluffed (Ep 537 - David/Winter Kept us Warm)
My guest this week is David Secter. As a student in the 1960s, David bluffed his way into getting equipment, money, and crew to make a groundbreaking queer film called Winter Kept us Warm. And despite the fact that he went in with zero filmmaking experience, the movie wound up becoming the first...
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The Lure of London (Ep 536 - Dr Who/Lee and David)
I’m chatting this week with two guests: TV producer David Moor and historian Dr. Lee Arnott of the delightful podcast The Problematic Gaze — that’s “gaze” as in an intent stare, though they’re the other kind of gays as well. David and Lee both grew up in small towns where it felt like life would...
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Feeding the Hungry & Getting Close to the Naked (Ep 535 - Next to Normal/Joseph)
My guest this week is the Reverend Joseph Peters-Mathews, the vicar of St. Hilda St. Patrick Episcopal Church in Lynnwood Washington. Joseph’s path to the clergy took him from the small-town South to New York City, along the way developing a love for musical theater that he puts to work in his...
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What makes X-Men so Queer? (Ep 534 - JP Karliak & Anthony Oliveira)
I have two guests on this week’s Sewers of Paris, both of them connected to a secret society of mutants. JP Karliak is the voice of Morph on X-Men ‘97, among many other roles; and Anthony Oliveira is a writer of many Marvel comics, among many other books. I spoke to them both about why the X-Men...
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Thirst Trap Daddies (Ep 533 - Star Trek/David)
My guest this week is David Duffield, who simultaneously lives in the past, the present, and the future. David’s work as a historian excavates queer histories that had previously been withheld from public view. It’s a project that gives those of us alive today a connection to the lives of people...
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It was a Rock Concert (Ep 532 - A Star is Born/Jon Kinnally)
My guest this week is Jon Kinnally, author of the new memoir I'm Prancing As Fast As I Can: My Journey From a Self-Loathing Closet Case to a Successful TV Writer With Some Self-Esteem. Jon knew from an early age that he wanted to entertain people, and he got his shot in the ‘90s when, barely…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Revealing stories about the books, movies, tv, music and more that have changed the lives of gay men. Each week, a guest plucks a piece of entertainment from their past, and answers the question: how did it change your life?
HOSTED BY
Matt Baume
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Sewers of Paris have?
The Sewers of Paris currently has 300 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Sewers of Paris about?
Revealing stories about the books, movies, tv, music and more that have changed the lives of gay men. Each week, a guest plucks a piece of entertainment from their past, and answers the question: how did it change your life?
How often does The Sewers of Paris release new episodes?
The Sewers of Paris publishes regularly with 300 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to The Sewers of Paris?
You can listen to The Sewers of Paris on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Sewers of Paris?
The Sewers of Paris is created and hosted by Matt Baume.
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